Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men 9)

You’re not the type to go down after one punch. You always pop right back up, swinging and snarling.

You’re a fighter

And I was.

I was a fighter, so I was going to fight.

BRANDT’S CHAPTER | 34

I wiped down the counter of the bar and glanced at the time. Twenty minutes until opening. I’m not sure why I was so obsessed with checking the time these past few days, but I did it constantly.

Obsessively.

It’d just passed the fifty-seven-hour mark since Julianna had gone missing. Twelve minutes since I’d called in to check on my brother. And about twenty-five seconds since I’d fought the urge to ditch work and drive the streets again, searching for my lost coworker.

Colton was a fucking mess. I’d never seen him this out of sorts before. He’d wept this morning, losing his shit all over Aspen, and none of us had known what to do to help him.

I didn’t like this powerless feeling. I had no idea what to do to ease my brother. None of us did.

They said he wasn’t eating or sleeping. When he wasn’t out looking for Juli, or hanging around her apartment in the hopes she’d show up, he was agitated and short-tempered. Not that I could blame him. If Sarah had disappeared into thin air, I’d freak the fuck out too. It was just so strange to see Colton like this and realize he really had gotten that close to Juli.

It had been so weird for me to think of them together. But in the last fifty-seven hours, my coworker had swiftly moved from one of my what-ifs and strictly to Colton’s one-and-only, which was bizarre in its own right. But whatever.

I was scared as hell for him. He was running himself into the ground and was going to be no good to anyone soon. I wanted to smack some sense into him and hug him all at the same time.

Pick exited from the back hall, talking on a cell phone. “Thanks for the info,” he was saying, “I owe you one.” When he hung up, he set his arms on the countertop and sighed heavily.

“Anything?” I asked hopefully.

He was doing everything he could to find Julianna too, pulling strings and digging up information behind the scenes, even hiring a private investigator. One of his bartenders had been abducted; he took that personally.

“My guy has a lead on the guy Colton got into a fistfight with.”

I frowned and shook my head, confused. “The racist drunk?”

Pick nodded and pinched a spot on the bridge of his nose. “His name’s Fulton Seymour. He’s been arrested a few times in the last couple years for some minor hate crimes, mostly drunken arguments, vandalism, petty theft. But it started about four years ago after his mom was murdered…” He looked at me meaningfully before adding, “By a black guy.”

I sighed heavily, not liking where this was headed.

“He bonded out of jail about an hour before Julianna disappeared.”

“Fuck,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Has anyone questioned him yet?”

“No one’s been able to locate him. He’s no longer living at his last known address. None of his friends know where he’s been staying and the orchard his family owned, about twenty miles outside town, was foreclosed about two years ago and is currently property of the bank.”

I ran my hands through my hair, relieved there was finally some kind of lead, and yet more frustrated and scared by what we’d l

earned. “Does Colton know any of this?”

Pick shook his head. “I don’t know what the point of telling him would be. If we can’t even find this Seymour guy, how could it help anything? I think it could only upset Colton more. Besides, who knows if he’s the one who took her or not.”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure if I agreed. If there’d been any kind of news about Sarah’s disappearance, I’d want to know every detail. It all just made me feel shittier.

Colton snapped at me more than he did anyone else, and he couldn’t look my way without glaring. He was pissed about the way I’d initially reacted to his relationship with Juli, and at the moment, I couldn’t blame him. But it all made me antsy and distressed. I wanted to do something for him—like find his Julianna—so he’d finally forgive me.

“I keep expecting her to walk through the doors for her shift,” Pick murmured, watching the waitresses set up tables for opening.

I nodded sadly. She’d been scheduled to work tonight, but I was filling in for her. For some reason, I thought it’d earn me a couple brownie points with Colton, but I don’t think he’d even noticed. I opened my mouth to ask what the chances were that she was still alive when the nightclub’s landline phone rang. We weren’t open yet and normally I’d let it ring through to voice mail, but I’d been answering every call coming in from every phone around me these last few days.